The Guy's Who Know The Most (Don't Look It)

"Vitamins—with their promise to bridge the gap between the nutrients our bodies need and those they get—have always seemed reassuringly simple: Just pop a multivitamin and let your body soak in those extra nutrients. But not any longer. During the past few years, study after study has raised doubts about what, if any, good vitamins actually do a body. They could even pose some real medical risks.

Half of all American adults take some sort of nutritional supplement. But research on a wide variety of patient populations and medical conditions has failed to find much evidence that multivitamins, the most commonly used of the lot, prevent major chronic diseases in healthy people. The most recent knock came this spring, when a study of more than 160,000 post-menopausal women, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that the all-in-one pills did not prevent cancer, heart attacks, or strokes and did not reduce overall mortality.

Individual vitamins and minerals haven't fared much better under scientific scrutiny, with research debunking some of the reputed benefits of vitamin B6, calcium, niacin, and others. In 2006, the National Institutes of Health convened an independent panel of experts to evaluate the evidence that vitamins could prevent chronic disease. The scientists ultimately issued a report stating that studies 'do not provide strong evidence for beneficial health-related effects of supplements taken singly, in pairs, or in combinations.'

The news on antioxidants, the darlings of the vitamin menagerie, is even more troubling. These compounds, which include vitamins A, C, and E, selenium, beta carotene, and folate, fight free radicals, unstable compounds thought to damage cells and contribute to aging. But not only do antioxidant supplements fail to protect against heart disease, stroke, and cancer; they actually increase the risk of death, according to a 2007 analysis of research on more than 232,000 people, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, as well as other studies."

-- Emily Anthes, reminding me that, if I died today, nobody would care - and all because I told them, with the best of intentions, they're wasting their money buying this crap - which I have never done, even before I'd ever read one thing in Slate.

When I think of all the time and money y'all have thrown away or given to these criminals - that could've gone to me, or some other worthy cause, instead - well,...I just lose a lot of respect for everybody. I'm apparently surrounded by rich useful idiots, who have always been rich useful idiots, and will always be rich useful idiots. And you can't be talked out of it - not by me anyway. As Judge Judy says:

Beauty fades, but stupid is forever.